Erik Nerinckx

Erik Nerinckx lives and works in Brussels.

As a young video-artist, he won the René Lust-award on the “Prix de la Jeune Peinture”, a Belgian contest somewhat comparable to the bigger Turner-Prize. His video-work of that period in time, was a kind of video-mapping avant la lettre. “Making use of slide- and videoprojections, projecting waves of light on objects and letting this light interfere with these objects, he is capable of evoking a mystical world full of fairy.” Paul Willemsen “He is very much of a painter in his attitude towards new media.” Filip Luyckx “Erik Nerinckx is working in the space between screen and projector. The glimmer in between the two, is his raw material. Thus breaks open the rational and economical disposal of the conventional pair of screen-and-projector. He uses the projector as a source of illumination and the lighting as a projection-machine. (...) Together with the wings of insects and elves, together with the vibration of impressionism en divisionism, this works stands in a long tradition of fairy-tale-like lightsplintering. (...) His work belongs of course in the category of “sensations”. Like all video-installation and performance, there is a zing of fancy-fair and attraction to it. Erik Nerinckx points most delicately his finger towards the core of sensation. With the smallest optical weight he counterbalances the world of familiarity. I have to admit that the restrained smallness of his work is generating deep down in me the biggest effects.” Dirk Lauwaert

In 2002, the exhibition-hall of the art-centre “STUK” in Leuven, showed a great number of the installations of Erik Nerinckx. In 2004, his catalogue “The Sparkle of Noise ” was published. After 2004 he left the path of video-installations searching for new forms of expression. He looked more and more for the physical space, he was confronting himself with the real object, the concreteness of a location, the representation had to make more room for the presentation. Plates of concrete were being lighted up, a wooden floor was being sanded and polished, garden-furniture was being sprinkled with water, damp-stains were evaporating, a small alley is becoming the stage for a soundscape of a wild sea...

He is evolving in his research into attracting attention towards the world of material- and colormetamorphoses and in doing so, turning this world of the ever-changing into a tangible experience. He is poking about exact those things that often disappear in the margins and folds of everyday life. He is showing with insistence and in a narratic, poetic way the small, subtle, transient, volatile things by translating them into experiencable moments.

In 2010 his installation “One table, two chairs” – a self-steering installation with water - won the “Prijs van Asse”, a contest where Jan Hoet and Marc Ruyters were members of the jury. This installation is showing the simple disposition of a table and two chairs. This garden-furniture is kept permanently wet ; an ingenious system is constantly measuring the amount of water and activates a sprinkling-system whenever the water is drying up. By retransposing some simple garden-technology, he is creating a world of almost nothing, a scene that is apparently light as a feather in and out of the margins of everyday life.

In the year 2012, Erik Nerinckx was invited by Joost Fonteyn to participate at “Klinkende Stad”, a leading international event with a focus on the art of sound. For his contribution “Breaking Waves” he travels together with Els Viaene, tape measure, six identical microphones and a multi-trackrecorder to the French town of Diepe, at the seaside. He makes together with Els a multi-track recording of the sea. During the “Klinkende Stad”-event, this recording is being played in a narrow alley, where the smallness of the alley accentuates in a contrasting, gripping way the the wideness of the sea.

Erik Nerinckx will be in 2015 on of the two artist in resident at “Overtoon”, a platform for research, production en distribution of audio- and media-art. During this period he will create a work with the sound of cooing pigeons.